Clark D Payne, 512 Squadron

Clark D Payne was a crew chief in the 512 Squadron. The other members of his crew were: Sgts. Bender, Bogue, Estes, Bond, and Scotty Dalstead as
armament man.

Clark submitted the story about his crew and the Strawberry Bitch.

I, Clark D. Payne, left Newport
News, Virginia on Sunday Dec.21, 1942 with about 400 or more troops to join the 376th
Bomb Group. At the time we joined the group in February 1943 they were
operating out of Soluch, Libya. I would like to give some history of the B-24
air plane known as Strawberry Bitch now on display at the Air Force Museum in
Ohio.

I was the maintenance crew chief
along with other ground crew member’s. They were Sgt.Bender, Bogue, Estes,
Bond, and Scotty Dalstead as armament man. This crew handled the plane from the
time it arrived to 512th Bomb Sqn 376the heavy bombardment group at
Enfidaville, Tunisia. In early October 1943, I along with my crew was assigned
to perform maintenance and service on it. We spent two days getting it ready for
combat flights. Mid afternoon on October 3rd Master Sergeant Metzler
the line chief told me to get my clothes ready as the planes were going back to
Berka It. to stay with the58th service squadron and I would have to
go too. We left Enfidaville late afternoon and that made us after night getting
to Berka. The crew flying this plane to Berka, was I believe the same crew that
had flown it from the U.S. over there. We had to land without any runway
lights; I was told that the pilot had never landed a B-24 at night without
runway lights. By the time we arrived at Berka some of the pilots that had
flown in and out while we were stationed there had landed and taxi around to
the end of the runway and turned their plane’s lights on the end of the runway.
The first two approaches the pilot made to land was to high so we had to pull
up and circle around. On the third approach I could see on the pilot’s face,
that he was desperate to land. On this approach he landed. It was not a smooth
landing by no means but the landing gear held. The next day, Oct. 4th , Strawberry Bitch made
its first bomb run to Tatoi Airdrome Athens, Greece and returned without any
damage. The following day it made the bomb run over Eleusis Airdrome near
Athens, Greece. On that trip it got a direct hit, on top of the left wing in
between no#3 and 4 gas cells knocking out both gas cells and damaging the main
wing spar between those two cells.

On October 11th the
group flew back to Enfidaville leaving Strawberry Bitch down there with the 58th
service squadron to repair.
Sometime around the 20th of November the group began to move
to San-Pancrazie , Italy, after being in San Pancrazie, for three to four
months. One afternoon as the group’s planes were landing from a mission that
day the Strawberry Bitch landed after being fully repaired by the 58th
service squad, my crew and I were reassigned to maintain it. To the best of my
knowledge it did not have any more major damage the rest of the time that I was
the crew chief, I left the group in August, 1944 and came back to the United
States and went to maintenance school on
B-29’s. I did not hear any more about it until I received two of the 376th
first history books and a post card picture was in one of the books. I was in
the 512th squadron. I am 92 years old and wanted to write some of
the things I remembered about this plane and its missions.